Some things just go together…

– Everything is an Adventure: Column by Julia Wolf –

Fall is the perfect time to do a little baking. Apple pies, pumpkin bars and anything with chocolate in it, just complement the weather finally cooling down. Better yet, the oven running won’t counteract the air conditioning, like it does all summer.

Sometimes, I think the smell of the desserts baking is even better than eating the sweet treats (though that first piece when everything is still warm is pretty delicious).

Recently, I fell heir to six very overripe bananas, as one sometimes does. They were barely rescued from the trash and the person who takes out the garbage seemed thankful that she would not have to smell them. I can’t blame her for wanting to avoid that smell, because the bananas were surprisingly potent already. Very banana-y.

Clearly, the only solution was to make chocolate chip banana bread right away.

It was still plenty warm for baking at the time, but I also had squash, beets, carrots and onions from my parents’ garden that I wanted to roast, so it was a party. If I was going to run the oven, I was going to make it worth it. Besides, those bananas didn’t look like they were going to be able to wait a day or two for the weather to cool off.

Once I had the veggies cut up and in the oven, I started making the banana bread. Since I had no eggs (I was not anticipating a banana bread emergency), I did a chia seed and water mixture as a replacement, which works surprisingly well, if you are OK with a slightly denser baked good.

Six bananas was the perfect number for a double batch of banana bread. Luckily, I have friends to help me eat it, too, because that is a lot of food for one person.

Everything was going well. I even tweaked the recipe to use up some odd stuff around my place, like the last 1/3 of a cup of cake flour, and milk chocolate and white chocolate chips left over from an overly-ambitious themed dessert, instead of semi-sweet.

After the banana bread was in the oven for about 20 minutes, I realized it wasn’t going to be quite as glorious of a smell as it could have been. There was some residual smell from the vegetables, especially the onions, which was expected and not altogether unpleasant. However, I did not take into account the fact that I made slime in the house with a young lady, right before the baking began.

One of the primary ingredients in the slime recipe is shaving cream, for fluffiness. Shaving gel does not work. The only shaving cream I’ve been able to find is men’s stuff, which smells incredibly strong.

The little bit of the slime mixture left on a dish sitting in the sink to be washed, mingled with the chocolate chip banana bread smell. It was an interesting combination, to say the least.

Some things just go together, like fall and pumpkin bars. Other things don’t, I guess. I’m looking at you, shaving cream and overripe bananas.